


Triptych

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 10:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9604061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Perhaps they were forever doomed to endless near misses ... until they managed to find each other in the same place, at the same time.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheeana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/gifts).



1.

Jack and Daniel were a mistake.

The trouble was, it was a mistake they kept making.

It was casual and very much on the down low. It started happening after the Stark case. For them, anger went easily to something else -- one kind of heat transitioning to another. They never talked about it. A casual hookup, the kind they were both (apparently) inclined towards, usually alcohol-fueled; it was a coin toss-up whether they'd end up at Jack's place or Daniel's.

They both knew it would be left behind, a youthful indiscretion, giving way to wife and family when a woman came along. And in fact, they both knew the woman was already there, an unmentioned third presence in their bed.

Neither of them ever stayed the night; whatever they had could not survive the light of morning.

And then Daniel was in L.A., and it didn't matter at all, if it ever had.

 

2.

Peggy and Jack were an accident.

It had been a long day, a hard-won victory. Daniel was gone to L.A., and with him had gone the buffer zone that he often provided between the two of them. With Daniel, they were balanced in a fragile yet enduring détente; without him, they could not maintain the balance, and fell too easily into anger, into recriminations and flaring, bitter fights.

And yet it was so easy to fall into sync when they were working a case. When they could forget to fight, they fell into an easy rapport untainted by betrayals and secrets and mistrust. 

And sometimes the warmth lingered beyond the case -- like tonight, when they were both tired and buoyed up on a tide of warm feelings. The rest of the SSR staff had gone home, except for a skeleton night crew beyond Jack's closed door. Peggy was perched on the edge of his desk, and Jack poured for both of them from a bottle of bourbon kept in his lower desk drawer.

He drank a lot, at night. It was one of the many thing she knew about him.

_That's always been the problem with us. We know too much about each other._

But tonight it was easy, in a way it almost never was, with them. He made her laugh; she made him smile. And she never remembered, afterward, who it was that leaned across the desk -- whose lips met whose, or why.

She would have expected kissing Jack to be ... combative, like the relationship they had. But instead he startled her with his gentleness. It wasn't an attack. It was a slow feeling out -- something soft and tender, something that caught her off guard like warm sunlight following a frost. She fell against him as he kissed her, and she sensed in his kiss that he would be a gentle lover, that he would cherish her body with his touch -- something she would never have expected from him.

It was as if, in an instant, she could see it -- could see how they would be, and she recoiled from it, pulled back, breaking the kiss.

"Don't tell me you don't think it's appropriate, Carter," he said, and it startled her to realize just how drunk he was. How drunk _she_ was -- she didn't normally lose track of her drinks, but the bottle was nearly empty; it had been a long day. "I've seen you do less appropriate things six times before breakfast, and twice more on Sundays."

"No, it's not, it's --" She touched her fingertips to her lips, the alcohol and emotions jumbling up in her mind and mouth, rendering her at a rare loss for words. They could do this, but ... it wasn't right. Not because it was morally wrong, but because there was still so much unresolved between them. Unresolved ... and unresolvable. They could not be lovers like this. Jack's ambition and her own knowledge of his secrets had planted a field of bitter seeds, and she didn't think it could grow anything but unhappiness.

She deserved more. They both deserved more.

"It's Sousa, isn't it," Jack said. There was an odd note in his voice, not exactly bitterness. "He's not the only one carrying a torch."

"Daniel's in L.A.," Peggy said sharply. "My decisions are my own; they have nothing to do with him."

He only nodded. And they didn't speak of it again.

 

3.

Peggy and Daniel were easy, by comparison; they'd circled around each other for a long time, and they fell together in a sudden shared moment, coming abruptly into sync. What they wanted was, for a change, perfectly in tune.

And then ...

A phone call.

A sudden intrusion of reality, ripping a hole in a curtain of happiness that had ever so briefly closed around the two of them.

Jack.

***

Peggy was tired of hospitals, tired of the sharp antiseptic smell, tired of the cloyingly friendly attentions of the nurses ... tired, most of all, of the worry, and the exhaustion that came in those hours between darkness and dawn, when there was nothing to do but wait. Ana was home and safe, but now Jack ...

He was as white as the sheets under him, his lips cracked and dry. He looked dead, except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

"You should go home," Daniel murmured, his arm around her. "Get some sleep."

But he hadn't left himself. Hadn't even tried to leave. And she'd seen the way his gaze kept snagging on Jack, the worry he was trying to tamp down, only for it to rise in his expressive brown eyes whenever he thought she wasn't looking.

Jack had been in surgery for six hours after the shooting at the hotel. He hadn't been expected to pull through. That he was still with them now was a testament to his irritating tenacity. He'd survived at the hotel, against all odds, for hours -- alone -- before a maid had tried to open the door only to have it stopped by his body. He'd survived an extensive surgery that, in his weakened condition, should by all rights have killed him.

And yet he seemed unwilling to complete his trifecta of stubbornness by opening his eyes.

Of all the things Jack had done to annoy her, this was by far the worst.

It was the darkest and quietest hour of the night, that long endless crawl between midnight and dawn. She and Daniel had napped in turns, slumped in uncomfortable chairs. Daniel had even taken his leg off for a little while, something she'd never seen him do in all the time she'd known him, massaging the stump as if it hurt him.

Peggy rested her head on his shoulder.

But neither of them suggested going home.

And when Jack finally _did_ stir -- when the sand-colored lashes fluttered -- she was half lost in a waking dream, so tired that she was drifting in and out, unsure where sleep ended and the waking world began. It was Daniel's sudden lurch forward that woke her as she was jostled off his shoulder.

"Jack?" Daniel said softly, and she raised her head to look, as Jack's eyes fluttered weakly open.

He stared at the ceiling for a moment before turning his head toward them. For the first moment, his gaze was completely blank, but slowly -- dulled by the drugs -- he focused on them, and the corner of his mouth twitched in a smile: one of the handful of truly open expressions she'd seen from him. Hurt and drugged and too out of it to keep his usual barricades in place, his gladness to see them was written plainly on his face.

"Jack," Peggy said, leaning forward to lay her hand on his arm.

"You ass," Daniel said, half-laughing, as he put out a hand to clasp Jack's shoulder.

Jack's hand twitched; his arm folded at the elbow, arm coming up, with all the negligible strength he had in him, to bump a fist against Peggy's arm, and there it rested, his knuckles against her upper arm.

She caught her breath and realized that she was very near tears. Daniel turned his head to the side and kissed her cheek lightly. She was able to see Jack's slow gaze snag on that, saw him grin a little more before his eyelids began to sag closed.

His arm was so cold. She hadn't really touched him before. Hadn't noticed that. And perhaps Jack wasn't the only one whose inhibitions were low tonight, in this quiet hour deep in the night.

Peggy got up and leaned on the side of Jack's bed. "Daniel, help me here."

Daniel, looking bemused, helped her push the narrow bed against the wall. Jack's eyes opened again and he frowned suspiciously at the two of them, his gaze sharpening.

"Daniel," Peggy murmured, turning to press her cheek against his forehead. She wasn't sure what she was asking for: permission, understanding? Perhaps a confirmation of what she thought might already be true.

Daniel smiled up at her and kissed her quickly on the corner of her mouth.

And she was no longer worried. There was nothing here to fear.

Peggy climbed carefully onto the bed and crawled, with exquisite care, over Jack's body to curl herself up on the wall side. Without that secure surface to press against, the bed was too narrow for two people without someone being in danger of falling out.

She settled against him. He was cool, despite the California heat. When she closed her hand over his, it was dry and cold. She fitted her body to his shape on the bed, and pressed her face into the cool crook of his neck.

She hadn't done this with Daniel, yet. Though she might have ... if not for Jack's shooting, tearing them away from their first kiss. Subsequent kisses had been furtive, stolen in hospital hallways and late at night when no nurses were around.

It seemed her firsts must be parceled out now. Shared between the two of them. Yet, this was not a lessening, but something that could potentially give her more than either alone.

Jack stirred against her, reluctant to relax back into his semi-conscious doze. "Peggy," he whispered.

"Quiet. You know Peggy. Can't stop her if she's got her mind set on something." Daniel's voice. Peggy raised her head a little, and saw Daniel take Jack's other hand, crutch-callused fingers running lightly across his knuckles.

Jack gave him a long, slow look, then closed his eyes.

Daniel laid his head down beside Jack's on the pillow.

Peggy, with her head and shoulders still raised, watched Jack turn his head to the side, his eyelashes flutter briefly -- 'til Daniel kissed him lightly, just a brush of lips across Jack's cheek. It made her think of the taste of Jack -- bourbon and missed chances, on that long-ago night in his office in New York.

"Go to sleep," Daniel murmured. "We'll still be here in the morning."

Peggy took the hand that was entwined with Jack's and moved it over his hip to rest against Daniel's warmer one. She wrapped around Jack as if her body could be a bulwark to keep out the world.

She didn't mean to fall asleep, but, comfortable and safe, she did.


End file.
